Welcome to another BridgeHands “Extra” lesson that intercedes our more voluminous, full length episodes. Again you will have an opportunity to demonstrate your Strong Jump Shift bidding skills as well as some play skills from our prior lessons.

In these exercises, again South will hold very distributional hands with a 6-5 suit shape. So when both long suits are in the MINORS and we are holding six-five shape, should we still “6-5, come alive?” As we witnessed in our prior lessons, first off we should consider Suit Quality (of 9+), looking for a good Semi Self-Sustaining-Suits or better. Also recall, we ought to look ahead and ponder whether we are prepared to play in a 3 Notrump contract, push to a 4 level contract in the minor, or go all the way to an 11 trick minor suit game or beyond. Okay, let’s explore the wild world of minor suit 6-5 hands, moving around a card here and there and measure the impact on the bidding, line of declarer play and available tricks. Be sure to view the entire video along with the concluding remarks for additional details.

In order to generate many more video lessons, beginning in the year 2013, we plan to frequently produce shorter, concise “no frills” video lessons without our all the detailed hand diagrams and written commentary. You will find these lessons here on our blog in the Social and Advanced categories under the subheading Bidding and Play (see top of any blog page). On a less frequent basis, we will continue to generate our popular and more comprehensive “Polling You” series.

Poll 80, Extra – Hand 0 (reprint of Hand 7 from Polling You #80)
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Despite holding a 15 High Card Point hand, with a 6-5 shape and nice honors South aggressively opens 2 Clubs with a 4 Losing Trick Count hand. While South’s losers may be Spades 1, Diamonds 1, Clubs 2, with less than 4.5 Quick Tricks (3 here) making such a strong opening call may come back to haunt South. With 2 of the top 3 honors, North questionably responds 2 Hearts (generally it is better to have 8+ total points in hand plus 2 of the top 3 honors in your bid suit). With a Self-Sustaining Spade suit this South jumps to 3 Spades (4 honors + 6 long = 10) – others might instead bid 2 Spades and rebid 3 Spades with 4 losers. Regardless, North signs off in 4 Spades.
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On play, West does not want to lead away from an unprotected Ace nor a Club King to South’s strong hand, thus settling for a trump lead (technically the middle Spade 8 is correct from 3). On the safe lead of a Spade, East goes up with the Queen that loses to South’s King. Declarer South clears the Spade suit in 3 tricks with East signaling for a Diamond should partner West again get on the lead. On the fourth Spade lead, West pitches a Heart without much encouragement since the visible dummy to the left holds King-Queen. With 2 Club losers, South switches to the ambiguous Club Jack, won by East’s Ace. East comes back with the Diamond King, won by South’s Ace and West’s Jack (high-low from doubleton). South continues leading the Club Queen, this time won by West’s King. West follows with the Diamond 9 to East’s waiting Queen but declarer South ruffs in. Procrastinating in hopes to squeeze the opponents a bit, South plays another trump before switching back to the Club 10. Fortunately both opponents followed to the third Club play, this time a lucky 3-3 split (36 percent chance) on a 5-3-3-2 suit distribution. Yet as it turned out, North’s Heart King-Queen honors were of no help on the mis-fitting hands.

Board 3
South Deals
E-W Vul

♠ 5 4 3 2♥ K Q 4 3 2♦ 3 2
♣ 3 2

♠ J 9♥ A J 10 9 8♦ 9 8 4
♣ K 9 6

N

W

E

S

♠ K Q 10 7 6♥ 7 6 5♦ Q 7
♣ A 5 4

♠ A 8♥ —♦ A K J 10 6 5
♣ Q J 10 8 7

West

North

East

South

1 ♦

1 ♥

Dbl

Pass

3 ♣

Pass

3 ♦

Pass

4 ♦

All pass

Trick

West

North

East

South

1. W

♦ 4

♦ 2

♦ Q

♦ K

2. S

♦ 8

♦ 3

♦ 7

♦ A

3. S

♦ 9

♥ 2

♥ 5

♦ J

4. S

♣ 6

♣ 2

♣ A

♣ 10

5. E

♠ 9

♠ 2

♠ K

♠ A

6. S

♣ K

♣ 3

♣ 4

♣ Q

7. W

♠ J

♠ 3

♠ Q

♠ 8

8. E

♥ 10

♠ 4

♠ 10

♦ 5

9. S

♥ 8

♥ 3

♥ 6

♦ 10

10. S

♣ 9

♠ 5

♣ 5

♣ J

11. S

♥ 9

♥ 4

♥ 7

♣ 8

12. S

♥ J

♥ Q

♠ 6

♦ 6

13. S

♥ A

♥ K

♠ 7

♣ 7

Poll 80, Extra – Hand 1
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Here the hand shapes and relative values are identical to the prior hand (0), switching the Diamond and Spade values for all players. However this time opener South lacks a self-sustaining MAJOR suit. So despite holding a 4 Losing Trick Count hand (1 Spade, 1 Diamond, 2 Clubs), South wisely begins bidding 1 Diamond instead of 2 Clubs when holding a terrific major suit. Why? When aiming for a major suit game with 4 losers, South only needs 1 tricks from partner (10 trick major suit game). However, if South winds up in a 11 trick minor suit contract with 9 winners in hand (13-4=9 tricks), North will need to produce 2 cover cards. With a fairly nice Heart suit, West overcalls 1 Heart. With 4 Spades and 5 well placed points, North makes a Negative Double, not 1 Notrump with less than 8 points and not 1 Spade which would promise 5+ Spades after the 1 Heart overcall. With 11 HCP and 3 card trump support in partner West’s Heart suit, East ought to consider bidding 2 Hearts, despite the questionable Queen-doubleton in South’s bid suit – after all, Bridge IS a bidders game! Regardless, South makes a 3 Club Strong Jump Shift rebid, forcing to game in a major suit or at least 4 of a minor suit here. Stuck for a rebid, North slows down the auction rebidding 3 Diamonds and after South’s 4 Diamond bid North is happy to pass.
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West leads the Diamond 4 (middle 8 spot is correct from three trump). East goes up with the Queen to South’s Diamond King. Declarer continues drawing Diamond trumps in two rounds. South proceeds with the Club 10 to East’s Ace who leads the Spade King, top of a broken sequence and no dummy threats. South wins the Spade Ace. It’s lather-rinse-repeat with South leading another high Club, ruffed with dummy’s Diamond Jack. South again ruffs a Spade lead from dummy before drawing trump in two rounds. After winning three rounds of Clubs, South continues with a second Club to East’s King. Following partner East’s lead, West returns the Spade Jack that East overtakes, returning the Spade 10 which South ruffs. South procrastinates playing one round of trump before cashing the Club Jack. Fortunately, both opponents follow (a 5-3-3-2 split), permitting South to cash the remaining three tricks to make a 10 trick partscore Diamond contract. Bottom line, when both suits are minors and you’re holding around 15 HCP, with a 4 Losing Trick Count hand, don’t be too pushy since you may have a misfit.

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In order to generate many more video lessons, beginning in the year 2013, we plan to frequently produce shorter, concise “no frills” video lessons without our all the detailed hand diagrams and written commentary. You will find these lessons here on our blog in the Social and Advanced categories under the subheading Bidding and Play (see top of any blog page). On a less frequent basis, we will continue to generate our popular and more comprehensive “Polling You” series.

Comments

This is certainly the 2nd blog post, of yours
I went through. Although I actually like this 1, “Polling You 80, Extra 1, 6-5 Minor Suit Strong Jump
Shift with Suit Quality, Losing Trick Count” the most.